Holmes placed the call to an after-hours number at a hospital at the University of Colorado, Anschutz campus, where he could reach psychiatrist Lynne Fenton, defense attorney Tamara Brady said.

It wasn’t clear why he called Fenton, and she wasn’t immediately available to talk to him. Holmes is accused in the July 20 shooting that left 12 people dead and 58 wounded.

The detail about the call came out during a hearing about Holmes’ relationship with Fenton, to whom he mailed a package containing a notebook that reportedly contained violent descriptions of an attack.

Prosecutors are asking a judge to allow them to review the notebook as part of their investigation, but defense attorneys say the journal is protected by doctor-patient privacy laws, and is inadmissible.

Brady brought up the phone call in an effort to show that Holmes and Fenton had an ongoing doctor-patient relationship.

These new revelations suggest that if Lynne would have taken Holmes’ call, she might have been able to talk him out of the shooting – or at least alert the police. But we’ll never know.